1. Technical Field
This disclosure generally relates to a server device, a network device, a method of providing a data providing location, a program for providing a data providing location, and a recording medium, and particularly relates to a server device, a network device, a method of providing a data providing location, a program for providing a data providing location, and a recording medium for use in a system in which a client device acquires a set of information about a dataset from a data storage location.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, RSS (Rich Site Summary) has been used for publishing updated information of Web sites. RSS is an XML (Extensible Markup Language) based format for describing metadata such as title and summary of a Web site in a structured manner.
Updated information written in RSS can contain titles, addresses, headings, summaries, updated time, etc., of Web site pages. RSS makes it possible for RSS subscribers to efficiently handle the updated information on many Web sites in a uniform format.
Some conventional multifunction machines have functions for providing device management information, such as communication histories, in RSS (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2006-54732 (Patent Document 1), also published as U.S. Application Publication No. 2006/0033950 A1). Patent Document 1 discloses an RSS reader that runs on a computer serving as a client device. The RSS reader periodically polls RSS feeds in plural multifunction machines and thus collectively manages plural sets of device management information of the plural multifunction machines.
The term “RSS feed” as used herein may indicate the URL of the RSS source. The RSS source is information described in RSS format.
However, according to Patent Document 1, a user of the RSS reader needs to register RSS feeds of the multifunction machines into the RSS reader. That is, the user needs to find out each of the URLs of the RSS feeds of the multifunction machines. This might be very troublesome if the user needs to register a number of RSS URLs.
Similarly, in the case where an administrator, such as an IT manager, manages a number of network devices and multifunction machines, the administrator needs to find out and register all the RSS feed URLs of the managed network devices and multifunction machines, which might be very troublesome.